5-S®

Introduction to 5-S®

5-S
is the first step towards TQM.Over
the last century, the Japanese have formalised the technique and name it as 5S
Practice.Prof. Sam Ho * has improved and
defined its terms in English/Chinese and developed the world's first 5-S Audit
Checklist which was used for training in Malaysia
under an Asian Development Bank Quality Expert
assignment in 1993-94 at SIRIM.In 1998-2000, a US$600,000 grant
has been given to the author to train up 2,500 5-S Lead Auditors in Hong Kong, the first of its kind in the
world.By now, over 20,000 people
have been trained, with over 100 organisations representing 50,000 people
certified as 5-S Registered Organisation.

5-S® in
Detail

The following
sections will explain each of the constituents of the 5-S practice in
appropriate depth to enable practitioners to get the maximum benefit from its
implementation, yet not making it too complicated to understand.

How to Implement the 5-S®?

5-S
implementation requires commitment from both the top management and everyone in
the organisation. It is also important to have a 5-S Champion to lead the whole
organisation towards 5-S implementation step-by-step. If you decide to be the
5-S Champion of your organisation, the following steps will help you to achieve
success.

Step 1: Get Top Management Commitment and be
Prepared

You have to sell the idea of the 5-S to the most senior executive of
your organisation. Moreover, and like any other quality programme, it is no
good to get just his lip-service. He needs to be 100% committed; not just in
announcing the start of the 5-S practice in the promoting campaign, but
committed to give resources for training and improvements. Then you need to get
prepared yourself.

In promoting the 5-S activities, the important thing is to do them
one at a time and to do each thoroughly. Even the little things have to be
taken seriously if they are to make any meaningful impact. This process can be
stratified as follows:

Make a decision and implement it
(e.g., the decision to get rid of everything you do not need, the decision
to have a major housecleaning, and the decision to have 5-minute clean-up
periods).

Make tools and use them (e.g.,
special shelves and stands for things, instructional labels, and placement
figures).

Do things that demand improvements
as prerequisites (e.g., covers to prevent filings from scattering and
measures to prevent leakage).

Do things that require help from
other departments (e.g., fixing defective machinery, changing the layout,
and preventing oil leakage).

Step 2: 5-S Training

The 5-S activities are all directed at eliminating waste and
effecting continuous improvement in the workplace. Right from the beginning
there will seem to be lots of 5-S activities to be done. As you go on, you will
notice that there are always additional 5-S problems to solve. They are not
insurmountable, though, if considered and solved one at a time.

It is essential in the 5-S activities that you train people to be
able to devise and implement their own solutions. Progress that is not
self-sustaining -- progress that always has to rely upon outside help -- is not
real progress. It is important that your people know, for example, how to use
the computer to do charts and graphs, even if it is not part of their job
description. They need to study maintenance techniques. And oddly enough, the
more problems they are capable of solving, the more problems they will spot.

Training should also include section-wide or company-wide meetings
where people can announce their results. Not only does this provide incentive,
but the exchange of ideas and information is often just what you need to keep
everybody fresh.

Step 3: Draw up a Promotional Campaign

Step 4: Keeping Records

It is important to keep records not only of decisions made but also
of the problems encountered, actions taken and results achieved. Only if past
practice has been recorded people will have a sense of progress and improvement
over time. There are a number of tools for keeping records, these are:

Digital Photographs

"Problem" Mark

Quantification

Museum Rooms

DVDs

Step 5: Evaluation

As with so many other things, it is very easy to get into a routine
with 5-S activities -- particularly because they demand constant everyday
attention to routine details. At the same time, because the individual tasks
appear minor even though they have great cumulative impact, it is easy to think
that you can put them off. Everybody is busy, and it is difficult to make alert
5-S activities a part of the daily routine. Workplace evaluations and other
means are needed to keep everyone abreast of what is happening and to spot
problems before they develop into major complications. In essence, you need to
devise ways that will get everybody competing in a friendly but no less intense
manner. Your evaluation tools are the key and it is as simple as using the 5-S
Audit Worksheet as your evaluation criteria.

Patrols and Cross-evaluations
Two other techniques that you can adopt to promote the 5-S activities are
patrols and cross-evaluations. Patrols can go around to the various workshops
and offices and point out problems. This is similar to 'managing by walking
around', but the patrol members do not even need to be management personnel.
They simply need to know what to look for and have the authority to point out
problems that need to be worked on. They simply need to know what questions to
ask.

Cross-evaluations are a variation on this theme in that they involve
having teams working on similar problems offering advice to other teams. One
advantage of doing this is the exchange of ideas and mutual learning.

The objective of the evaluation is to ensure that the 5-S
implementation will lead to a conducive total quality environment.